Written for starmotions for Fullmetal Positivity's 2016 Secret Santa! I've always had a soft spot for Al and if anything, my love for him has only grown over the course of writing this, so I have you to thank for that! Enjoy!
Al lifts his hand, heavy with tubes and wires, and runs it over the back of his shorn hair.
"We cut it for you, Mister Elric," the nurse tells him. The question must have shown on his face. Strange, having a face you can parse questions from; stranger still to be called Mr. Elric, an epithet Al associates with his brother. The bizarreness of the situation coupled with the numbness of its enormity could almost make Al think this is all some hallucination. He focuses on his hair, trying to ground himself. The bristles under his fingers sharpen reality a little bit.
"Why?"
If Al, still disoriented, wasn't expecting himself to ask, it takes his nurse completely aback. There's a moment's pause, during which she stares at him with wide eyes, and then she gives a short little laugh that, to Al's new human ears, doesn't sound entirely genuine. "Oh, it was overlong, it was matted," she says lightly, patting Al's thin forearm where the wires don't cover the skin. Al twitches at the smooth rubber of her glove, the warmth of her hand through it; there's a thin band of coolness on her third finger that might be a ring. "It was the sensible thing to do."
Sensible. The word seems to thrum in Al's brain, not quite uncomfortable but not quite right, either. Meeting the nurse's eyes, a plain brown, Al watches as a lock of silver hair falls into her face under the mask of her protective suit, making her nose wrinkle. Blowing it away doesn't help. As she runs him through the usual series of questions—assessing his condition, his pain, his symptoms, Al giving polite, dutiful responses—she keeps trying to get the hair out of her line of sight, and Al soon finds himself equally distracted by it. How sensible is her long hair, as a nurse? It can't be more sensible than Al's: she has patients to take care of, whereas Al's only job, so Ed and Winry insist, is to get well. Confined to a hospital room, quarantined until his immune system rebuilds and his fragile body can withstand the environment, Al has nothing but time to fiddle with his hair. He could have tended to it, washed it and brushed it and cared for it until it was pretty again. Now, cropped brutally short, it'll take years to regrow. The thought puts a bitter flavor in his mouth.
Done with her questions, the nurse finally notices him staring. His discontent must show—he's got to learn how to hide his expressions, unaccustomed as he is to having them—because she shifts slightly, her eyes creasing in slight confusion. "Is something wrong?" she asks.
You could have asked, Al thinks, so sharply he startles himself. What's gotten into him? What about the length of his hair is so important that he wants to cut her over it? Is it the length itself, or that he wasn't offered the choice, when it's his body, so recently returned to him? The nurse's own hair keeps tickling her nose. If he were a girl, Al thinks, a slow, creeping realization, or born one, maybe they'd have let him keep his.
The nurse tilts her head, confusing shifting to concern. Al arranges his face into a polite smile.
"No, of course not," he replies. "Just a lot on my mind." He tries, but his mouth won't quite form the words thank you. The nurse seems totally mollified nonetheless.
On the other side of clear glass wall that separates Al's quarters from a visiting area, where Winry sleeps sprawled ungracefully in an armchair, the nurse immediately takes off her protective mask, puts it under her arm, and reclips the pin keeping her bangs out of her face.
Al burrows back under his blankets.
The armor was hollow, but heavy. Al worried that Ed's bed wouldn't be able to support its weight. Still, a chair would have held up even worse, and squatting or kneeling would have given him less control of the brush. He kept his touch as gentle as possible as he tugged it through Ed's hair, one hand behind his neck while the other worked. Ed insisted that he wasn't tender-headed, but Al wasn't about to cause him undue pain: his automail was still healing, and the pain he wouldn't admit to during the day would make him moan and whimper in his sleep. Granny's strongest medicine could only quiet it so much.
"Your hair's getting long, Brother," Al said. Conversation might curb those unpleasant thoughts.
Ed reached around with his good arm and touched a piece, his head tilting a little in thought. "Yeah, I guess so," he agreed. "Granny thought so, too. Said she'd give me a trim if I wanted."
"Do you want one?" Al asked.
Ed took a moment to mull it over. "I don't know," he answered. "Guess it is kind of long for a boy. I think it suits me, though. Not sure why."
Peering at his face, Al agreed. With short hair, Ed had looked a little awkward, almost chunky, his head too big and round for his slight body. With hair to his shoulders, his face looked slimmer, moving attention from his babyish cheeks to his strong jaw and golden eyes, bright and glinting in spite of the dark shadows beneath them. It made him look older, or at least closer to twelve than ten.
"Well, it's up to you," Al told him. Most of the tangles were gone now, but he kept pulling the brush through Ed's hair: the act itself was soothing. Ed didn't seem to mind, only humming in idle agreement. He looked comfortable, but Al could see goosebumps along his neck where the armor touched him. The steel would be cold, Al thought. Unlike Ed: his dark skin had always been so warm, his hair, too. Al remembered sharing a bed with him on stormy summer nights, curling into his side while thunder made the bedframe rattle; Ed's skin had been soft, and the smell of outdoors would always linger on him, mingling with the soap from his bath.
"Uh, Al?" Ed's voice, gentle but confused, broke through Al's thoughts, and he looked down to see that his hands had gone still, Ed's gold hair pooling on the armor's leather glove. Brushed to gleaming, that hair should have felt like silk. It should have tickled Al's fingers and left little trails of warmth as it slid between them to spill around Ed's shoulders. With as tight as he was holding it, the wooden brush handle should have left an indention in Al's palm; he half-waited in vain for nonexistent knuckles to pop.
"Y-yes, Brother?" Even as he spoke, his voice sounded far off. A tinny echo clung to his words, replacing the human warmth that should have filled them out. The emptiness came quickly. It swallowed him, its blackness encroaching Al until what few senses he did have—sight, hearing, thought—all felt fuzzy and numb. It wasn't even agonizing: agony would yield sensation and therefore relief.
Ed had turned to face him, struggling to hide a wince as the movement jostled his arm. No, not his arm; the automail. His arm he had exchanged at the Gate for Al's soul—a waste of a sacrifice, Al thought, because by saving his life, Ed had damned him to an existence that might as well have been death for as unending as it seemed, for as much as it separated him from the rest of the living, breathing, feeling world. For one horribly hopeless moment, a handful of seconds that felt like years, Al almost resented Ed for it.
But one look in those eyes, filling a normally sharp face that was now soft with concern, and Al squashed the notion under his heel, startled and ashamed. Ed had risked his life to bind his soul to this armor; who would Al be if he let that sacrifice be in vain? How could Al even consider leaving him, when Ed had fought so hard for him, and when he needed Al now more than ever? Never mind the inconveniences: from this point on, Al had no choice but to see this body as what it was, a gift. He would do everything in his power to repay his brother for this gift.
He would restore Ed to how he was. This would not defeat him, either of them.
"Are you okay?" Ed asked him. Though his voice was soft, contemplative, the burn in his eyes was like a scream, some animal howl of determination. He must be thinking the same thing, Al thought. He wanted nothing more than to smile at him, but settled for patting his head in an imitation of Ed's favorite gesture of affection.
"Yeah," Al said. If it was a lie, it wouldn't be for long. "I'll be fine, Brother."
Ed graced him with a half-smile, which then faded slowly as he turned and fixed his gaze out the window, where leaves in glorious reds and oranges and golds swirled around in brisk, early autumn breezes. October would begin soon.
Sleep. After sensation, this is what Al has missed the most about having a body. Shutting his eyes against a confusing, unpleasant, painful reality and turning it all off for a while in favor of whatever sweet nonsense his brain chooses to show him. No more is his life like one very long and awful day.
Except, Al learns very quickly, sometimes his brain isn't ready to give him the reprieve he thinks he deserves. In the hazy hours after the Promised Day, he was too exhausted and full of drugs for nightmares; his dreams were just pleasant flashes of soft colors and familiar faces when he dreamt anything at all. Now, however, just days later, the nightmares come with a vengeance. Like his dreams before, there's not much rhythm to them—just glimpses of horrors real and imagined—but it doesn't make them any less terrible. His mom dies a hundred terrible deaths, Ed a thousand. Nina nuzzles his hand with her snout and asks mutely to play, blood dripping from her jowls. He looks out on a desolate Amestris, the souls ripped from all fifty million citizens as fuel for more Philosopher's Stones. Through it all, his mind perfectly imitates the feelings of emptiness and unreality that came with being bound to the armor, so that Al almost sobs with relief when he wakes with a start and feels the smooth sheets under his fingers.
His cry rouses Winry, still dozing in the armchair. She straightens as seamlessly as she can and immediately crosses to the panel of glass that separates them. "Are you all right, Al?"
With some effort—his legs are still weak and thin—Al copies her, leaning heavily on the rolling IV pole he's connected to as he pads his way over and sinks down onto the cushion provided. Winry sits cross-legged on the floor. Gazing down at her, Al notes how exhausted she looks: her ponytail coming undone, her eyes ringed with circles, her clothes rumpled. He almost wishes he hadn't woken her.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he says, the automatic response. Winry, unlike the nurse, sees right through it.
"Bad dream?" she asks gently.
There's no point in lying. Al nods, tightening his fingers in the blanket around his shoulders.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Winry says.
His first instinct is to say no. It's no mystery why he's having these dreams. With all that he saw in those five sleepless years, he should feel lucky he's able to get any rest at all. More than that, Winry's seen her share of terrible things and probably has plenty of nightmares of her own; Al doesn't need to add to them.
Yet, as he watches her, her face creased with concern, he finds it suddenly hard to keep mum. It's not as if it's ever done him any good, bottling up his thoughts and feelings—with guilt churning in his belly, he remembers one time in particular it did a lot more harm than good—and this is one of the few people Al knows he can trust. Besides, if he doesn't want to delve into his repertoire of bad memories, there's plenty more bothering him if she really wants to lend an ear. Almost unconsciously, Al scruffs his short hair with his hand as he wonders where to begin, and lifts an eyebrow at the wry smile Winry gives in response.
"I kind of came to when you were arguing with that nurse," she tells him, almost apologetically. "I couldn't tell if it was part of my dream or not. I guess it wasn't."
He must look unhappy with his hair, then. With Winry, being read doesn't bother him as much; it saves him having to explain, if nothing else.
"Was I arguing?" he asks. "I wasn't meaning to. I was trying to be polite."
"Well, I wouldn't have been," Winry answers. No, Al thinks, struggling to hide a smile, she wouldn't have been. She's like his brother, a strong sense of justice well-blended with passion and spitfire; had she been awake, she'd have given that nurse a piece of her mind. Much as Al wouldn't have wanted a scene, he's almost sorry he missed it. "And you shouldn't have been, either. Boy or girl, they had no right to cut your hair without permission. It couldn't have been much worse than—hell, than mine is right now," she says, gesturing, which forces a weak laugh from Al, "and no one's buzzed my head. These Central doctors and nurses don't know what they're doing. We could easily fatten you up and make you strong again at home."
"It's my immune system they're more worried about," All tells her. "Because of all that time in the Gate, it's pretty much—" He blows a raspberry and makes a thumbs-down. "I can't fight anything off right now. If they don't rebuild it slowly, by shutting me in here and gradually exposing me to stuff, I'd die if I caught so much as a cold."
At I'd die, Winry's face pales slightly. "Well, we don't want that," she says, clearly trying for airy, but she sounds almost choked. Maybe it's too soon to joke about his death. Maybe, after all that's happened, they'll never reach that point again. The guilt in the pit of Al's belly only intensifies; he wants to apologize, but it's the sort of apology that should be coupled with a pat of her hand or a stroke of her hair, and he still can't touch her through the stupid glass. After everything, he's still cut off from the people he loves, still trapped, and part of him—a small, gnarled part of him—still feels that old empty ache that won't quit.
He tries to deflect. "Where's my brother?"
Ed has quickly made a home of the visiting area beside Al's room, as testified by the mess of blankets spread over the small loveseat near Winry's armchair. Before Winry arrived in the early hours of the morning after the Promised Day, Ed refused to leave at all, not even to eat or bathe or have his own wounds tended to; only after Al's insistence and Winry's promise that she wouldn't leave Al's side did Ed finally grab dinner and a shower after an irate team of nurses bandaged him up. Since then, he and Winry have been eating, sleeping, and bathing in shifts. Al appreciates their support and company, but he's not at all opposed to the idea that Ed finally heeded his advice and went to get some fresh air, or a meal that isn't from the hospital's cafeteria.
Winry's mouth twists, and she huffs out a sigh and props her elbow on her knee to drop her cheek into her hand. "Grumman finally nabbed him," she says; then, at Al's look of confusion, adds, "The new Fuhrer. Ed's done a good job of evading him till now, but the whole country wants to know what happened and he needed Ed to help concoct a story, since everyone's guessed he was involved anyway."
Al's brows knit with disapproval. "Why don't they tell people the truth?" he asks.
"I guess because they figure no one would believe it?" Winry gives a crooked smile. "Most of Amestris doesn't know anything about homunculi and thinks the Philosopher's Stone is just a legend. No, I agree with you, Al," she says, when he opens his mouth to insist. "No matter how crazy it sounds, I think everyone should know what really happened, and if they don't believe it, that's their problem. I wouldn't even assume that no one would believe it, anyway. I mean, we all just—collapsed. And for a while, I don't know how long—it felt like forever—we were all—"
As her sentences become choppier, Winry's hands start to fidget, like they can capture what it was like to be part of Father's Philosopher's Stone when her words can't. Her expression is tight, her eyes glazed as she remembers it. Al's about to change the subject when she heaves another sigh, leaning back on her hands.
"The point is," she says quietly, "I think any explanation would work for them. It might as well be the real one. But they didn't exactly ask me, and, well. It's not as if the military's ever had a penchant for telling the truth."
"It's like nothing has changed." The words come out bitterer than Al expected.
It seems to take Winry a little aback, but she only shrugs. "Even if they've shooed out the homunculi and Bradley's supporters, it's still the government. Maybe it'll never really change. But if what Lieutenant Hawkeye says is true, this Grumman is a friend of Colonel Mustang's, so he can't be all bad."
"How is Colonel Mustang?" Al asks. "I haven't seen him since the Promised Day." There are a lot of people he hasn't seen since he was ushered to the hospital, actually. His dad, Lieutenant Hawkeye, Mr. Heinkel, any of his other military friends … in this room, he's more isolated than ever, it dawns on him. It's an uncomfortable thought.
If Winry sees the unease on his face again, she chooses to ignore it this time. "He's … getting on," she says. "The lieutenant told me he wants to bounce back as quickly as possible, but he's still blind, Al. There's a certain amount of … rehabilitation, I guess, before he can just jump back in. He doesn't seem all that deterred, though. He's got Lieutenant Hawkeye and his whole team to help him where he needs it, and I doubt Ed's going to leave him hanging."
So Mustang still wants to be Fuhrer, in spite of it all—sighted or not. It sparks a bit of hope in Al. Some things may never change, true, but Roy Mustang will damn well try his hardest.
"Has Ed been to see him?"
"Not yet. Says he's been meaning to, though," Winry responds. "Maybe he'll do that when Fuhrer Grumman turns him loose."
That's good, Al almost says, before he decides the response is so awkward and lackluster he might as well say nothing at all. The following silence hums in Al's ears like a hornet's nest: faint, but threatening. He swallows around the dryness in his throat. Why is he so unnerved?
"Enough about all that." Winry shakes her head so vigorously that, at last, the ponytail holder—just barely hanging on to a few strands—falls loose, blond hair spilling down her back. She doesn't seem to notice. "What about you, Al? If things are crazy for the rest of us, they've got to be at least ten times crazier for you. In a good way, I mean."
"Depends on how you look at it," Al mutters. He regrets it as soon as he looks at Winry's face, concern immediately washing over her. "Well, I mean—"
"Al, you don't have to hide anything from me," she cuts across him, gentle but firm. "You don't have to try and spare my feelings or sugarcoat whatever you're going through. Much as I'd like to, I still can't read your mind—just your face, now. And right now, your face is telling me something's bothering you." Then, when Al only closes his eyes and sighs, she adds softly, "You can trust me, can't you?"
"You're one of the only people I can trust," Al answers without thinking. He opens his eyes to see her smile thinly, faint color rising to her cheeks. "Or, at least, one of the only people I can trust with everything. It's not a matter of trust. It's more … not wanting to burden you with it all. You have your own baggage, you know?"
"You're not burdening me if I'm asking," Winry insists. "Besides, you'd do the same for me, right? I know for a fact that talking helps. Or, at least, that not talking doesn't help." She remembers, too, then. He hopes that's sympathy that makes her lips twitch, and not judgment. "It might feel good to get it off your chest, and to know that what you're feeling is valid. Because it is, Al, I promise it is, no matter how stupid it seems to you."
"It does seem stupid," he mutters. Winry looks like she wants to argue, but she holds her tongue, watching him patiently. Heaving a sigh, Al glances up at her and tells her, "I'm not supposed to feel like this anymore."
"Feel like what?"
"Just … sad, and … no, not even sad. That's too much." Al rubs his face with his hand. "It's more like … I'm empty. I sit and I feel nothing, like I've just shut down or something. And then sometimes … I don't know … there's some hopelessness, under all that? Like there's nothing good left, like nothing good's going to happen. Which is stupid," he says emphatically, his face flushing embarrassedly; spoken aloud, it sounds like nothing but melodrama. "I know that, logically. Ed's okay, you're okay, I have my body back, they're fixing Amestris—there's no reason I shouldn't be happy right now, and yet—"
Winry lifts a hand and reaches out, then pauses, as if remembering the glass between them. Still, after a moment, she rests it against the pane regardless. Al matches his against it; he can almost feel her warmth through the barrier.
"Al, just because things are looking up doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows," she tells him. "Everyone who died, still died—old man Fu, Captain Buccaneer. Everything awful that happened still happened. Of course you're not over the moon; things have only just now calmed down enough for you to process it all, and it's a lot to process and deal with, more than I can imagine. Not to mention they've got you stuck in here—I can't imagine that's fun."
"It's awful," Al says, smirking bashfully when he hears the little whine in his voice. Winry flashes a sympathetic smile that then becomes a solemn stare.
"Al, if you'll pardon the cliché, you've been to hell and back," she says quietly. "No one's expecting you to bounce back right away—no one that matters, at least. You've spent these past few years racing against the clock, trying to get your body back, saving the world—and making sure your brother doesn't get his ass killed, of course." Al manages a small, sad laugh. "This is your time to rest, and recover, and just … absorb all that happened. It might take a while. It might never really stop—you might be eighty years old and it could just dawn on you, 'Holy shit, I survived that.'" Winry sighs and ducks her head. Her voice is tight; Al wonders if she's fighting tears. "And that goes for all of us," she adds, "but you especially. Al, what you're feeling is normal and healthy. I promise."
"I'm just so tired of feeling empty," he murmurs.
When Winry meets his gaze again, like he guessed, her eyes are glistening. Crying for him once again, even though he's got his own tears now, and plenty reason to shed them. For some reason they won't come. "I know you are," she whispers. She hiccups, wiping her face with her sleeve. "It'll probably get worse before it gets better. If it hurts now, once the shock and numbness pass, it'll hurt even worse. But, Al—you can hurt, and you can feel empty, and hopeless, that's all understandable, but just don't forget there are people who love you, okay? Me, and Ed, and Granny, and others, too. You have people who love you and support you unconditionally, and we're all fighting like hell to make sure you can get to a place where you can be happy again, in spite of everything."
"Why's that?" He half-means it as a joke, but the smile doesn't stick to his lips and the words sound raw and pitiful. Winry, though, manages a smile, even as a tear spills down her flushed cheek.
"Because you deserve it, dummy," she says. "That's why."
The door opens, and Ed elbows his way in with his good arm, the left bound in a sling. Winry can't hide her tears before he notices them; his smile fades a little.
"It's okay, Brother," Al tells him. Her words reassured him, but the guilt at making her cry chases that feeling away. "We were just talking."
Winry confirms this with a nod, sniffing and wiping her face. Ed crosses to her and produces some tissues from his pocket.
"Been with Mustang and the gang," he says by way of explanation. He pats Winry's head, smoothing back her messy hair. "This is nothing. You should've seen Fuery and Armstrong—between the two of them, I swear they nearly flooded the whole fucking floor." Al smiles, and Winry makes a watery noise that might be a laugh. "You eaten today?" Ed asks her. "You should go get some lunch."
"Is that what time it is?" Al says. There's a clock in the visiting area, but from where it's placed, he can only see it from certain angles in his room. With only a few windows, their curtains usually drawn to protect his sensitive eyes from the glare of sunlight, and his erratic sleep schedule, it's hard to keep track of the time of day. "Go get some food, Winry. And maybe take a walk, get some air. I'll be okay, I promise."
"You heard the man," Ed agrees. That—doesn't quite sting, but it snags, odd in Al's ears, a missed beat, a wrong note. Al pushes it aside to address Winry as she lets Ed help her to her feet.
"Thank you, so much," he tells her. "I'm sorry I made you cry."
She's shaking her head before his sentence is finished. "Oh, I cry at everything, don't worry about it," she says, gulping down the last of her tears as she finishes drying her cheeks. "And it's been—a rough few days."
"For everyone," Ed says. "There's a really good sandwich shop a few blocks from here. Don't worry about paying; just drop my name, that'll do it."
"I was going to," Winry tells him, trying for a smirk. Ed elbows her, which immediately becomes a one-armed embrace, his good hand patting her head. She ducks out from under his arm after a moment and wiggles her fingers at Al; then, rubbing her head, she leaves the room.
"Everything all right?" Ed asks.
"Yeah," Al says. "Just—talking about all that's happened. How I'm dealing with it. I'm dealing with it," he adds, at Ed's concerned look. Ed nods, putting a hand on his hip.
"Hey, uh, Al," he says, "you don't mind if I take a nap, do you? Grumman and his flunkies haggled me for hours, and then there were the waterworks up in Mustang's room—I'm beat. I mean, if you'd rather I stay up—"
"No, no, Brother, sleep," Al answers at once. "Honestly, I'm okay for a few hours. I have books and things." All carefully decontaminated before being allowed in his room. Sometimes he feels like he's part of some bad sci-fi radio show.
Even as he kicks off his boots, Ed looks hesitant. "Only if you're sure," he says, and yawns. As he curls up on his loveseat-bed, he calls over to Al, "Holler if you need me."
How redundant—Al will always need him, and he'll always be there, because he's Ed. Al watches him doze off with his hair spilling over the pillow and hopes his sleep is sound.
Alphonse. Alphonse.
Somewhere at the edges of his memory, Al recalled an old teacher of his who'd had a book on names and their meanings. Did he ever look in it? Did he ever flip through its pages—were they crisp, worn, dusty?—find "Alphonse," and learn what it meant? If he had, he couldn't for the life of him remember it now, sitting on the hospital's roof with his back against the wall. The sky was a bright, clear blue, the clouds puffy and soft-looking. It was a pretty day, and warm for February, the nurse had told him. Not that it mattered to Al—the breezes that ruffled his apron could have been blisteringly cold, carrying snow that buried him up to his eyes, and it would've made no difference. He hardly remembered what cold even felt like.
Maybe he'd never known at all.
Alphonse Elric. It tripped off the tongue, metaphorically speaking, but didn't settle as well in the ears; something about it seemed to catch, to tug. It lacked the same ring as Edward Elric, or even Trisha Elric. Was it just his brain being funny, like when you repeated a word too many times and it stopped sounding like one? Or, a little voice said, did the name sound off because Ed, all of eleven years old at the time, had chosen it himself?
It was a hard theory to combat logically because, if proven true, the betrayal would be so sharp that Al wouldn't need a body to feel its sting. The horror of the idea was a slow, creeping thing. With every moment that Al couldn't shake it, it seemed to compound, adding new layers to the awfulness until he felt rattled to the very core. Fear and anxiety quickly beat down his skepticism, and dread happily took its place. On the other side of the roof, Al watched the window carry away bits of leaves, longing to follow—wishing to be anywhere but here.
But, being limbless, he was more trapped than ever. And now one question trilled inside his head again and again, beating at the inside of his armor's helmet like a furious bee: could he ever be free?
Was I ever really human at all?
The door to the roof opened.
Out stepped Ed, shivering in his hospital-issued pajamas, and Winry, carrying a burlap sack bulging with metal parts. Ed's automail had been repaired; the arm moved as fluidly as the flesh one as he helped Winry arrange the scraps in front of Al, like peace offerings, he thought. The idea made him feel sour. Normally, the sight of Ed's soft smile would have reassured him, contented him—now he only saw a guilty edge that twisted like a knife. Guilt added fuel to the fire of his theory. If Ed was guilty, it begged the question of why, and Al's mind was only too happy to supply an answer. He knows what he did to me. He made me, tailored me to suit his wants and needs, and created this whole story to make sure I'd help him if the memories he implanted didn't do the trick. He knows how much I hate being like this … and maybe he knows I know the truth.
But, no. Ed could never know how much Al hated it. Al watched him, shivering against the wind in his thin pajamas, like it wasn't a gift to feel the cold, and felt something dark and bitter creep over him. He wanted him gone. Not dead—not hurt—conditioning or not, Al could never really wish ill on him—but he wanted Ed away from him, somewhere Al wouldn't have to look at his gentle smile and bright eyes and ache for what he'd learned had never been. Figuratively, of course; this body didn't allow pain. Had Ed made it that way on purpose? Did he cringe to think of Al in agony, try his best to block the ability to hurt, and accidentally eliminate the ability to feel at all? Or would pain have been weakness, something he couldn't afford in a soldier?
Could Al have hyperventilated, he would have been: the anxiety had reached a fever pitch. Damn Ed for making it so that he couldn't even panic properly.
"Listen," Ed said, and he might as well have screamed it for how his soft voice made Al recoil. That sweet smile pricked like a thorn. Leave. I know the truth. There's nothing you can say to make it better. "I'm sorry."
Especially not that. Sorry. He was sorry. For what—lying to Al for years, creating him for his own selfish reasons, taking away pleasures like feeling and eating and sleeping to dangle them in front of him as bait to recruit him on a wild goose chase, never mind that it made Al's life a living hell? Or that he'd accidentally created a being smart enough to parse the truth? How could he do this? More than anything, Al wanted a human body—a throat so that he could shout until it tore, eyes to shed oceans of tears in his grief, real human hands that would feel warm against Ed's chilled skin, fingernails digging into his arms as he shook him and wailed, why, why, why? Would Ed scoff at such a pathetic display? Or would such a human expression of pain force Ed to accept the enormity of what he'd done—that Al was real, damn it, and didn't deserve to suffer, no more than Ed did, or Winry, or—or Mom—
Did he ever even know her?
"I'm gonna fix you," Ed said, kneeling, "right now."
That's right, Al thought, with more acid than he'd ever used to address anyone, much less his brother, who he loved above all else. Because Ed made it so, he reminded himself, steeling. Fix your broken toy. You'll need him for later, won't you? Won't you—
"Trust me," he said, and did he ever stop talking, "I'm not gonna give up on this yet, Al. We're gonna do this, but we'll do it the right way, and you'll be normal again, I'm sure."
How long did he intend to keep up the charade? In Resembool, he'd meant to tell him, Al was sure of it. Now he seemed as content as ever to lie to him. Had their foray into Lab 5, being so close to the Stone he must've been able to taste it, convinced him otherwise? Did Ed really want the Stone to restore his body? What would he do to Al once he got his hands on it? How could he, how could he, how could he—
"Maybe you can go back to normal, Brother, and I hope you do," Al answered, trying his best to keep his voice calm. The affection that Ed must've instilled in him was hard to shake. "But I'm not sure I ever can."
Surprise flickered across his face. "What are you talking about, Al?" You know. "Of course you can."
He stood, ponytail whipping in the breezes, and brought his mismatched hands together to press them to Al's breastplate.
In that moment, as light flared inside his blood seal, Al almost felt something—a tickle, some heat. It spread rapidly, branching outward as the armor regrew its arms and legs, and then faded all at once, so that Al stood good as new but hollow as ever. He flexed a fist, watching the leather glove that was his right hand, and wondered if it had ever been flesh. The emptiness seemed boundless: no cure, no way to reverse it, and no indication that there had anything else.
"That's how you made me this way when you attached my soul to this armor in the first place, isn't it?" Al asked quietly.
Ed gave a guileless smile. "That's right," he answered.
Al almost wanted to hit him.
"Along with my memories," he said.
That did more than a slap would have. Ed's expression changed in an instant, his mouth falling slack, his eyes wide and shocked and wounded. The knife handle was inviting; Al gladly twisted it.
"After all, memories are just information you can reference like a cabinet of files," he said, making each word a barb. Ed looked more confused than hurt, and Al wanted him to hurt, like he hurt. "As skilled an alchemist as you are, you could've created any memories you wanted me to have."
The silence that followed thrummed in his ears; he could almost believe it was the beat of his blood. "Fake memories?" Ed murmured, almost to himself. Then, maddeningly, he cracked a grin. "Don't tell me that's what you're upset about."
"Why shouldn't it be?" Al shot back. "A while back in Resembool, there was something you wanted to tell me, but you couldn't. You said you were afraid of how I'd react. You remember that, don't you?"
He did—Al saw the recognition flit across his face. His expression settled into something numb and sad, like Ed couldn't believe his ears, or refused to. Denying it still! Al's voice rose to a shout.
"I can't remember parts of my past because they never happened!" he cried out. "My memories and my soul are fake! Something you created! Isn't what you wanted to say?"
It was agony to say aloud, and worse still to watch the horror in Ed's face, confirming his fear. It was true, wasn't it? Why else would Ed look like that—horrorstruck, like all his lies were collapsing before his eyes?
Winry, quiet till now, leapt to Ed's defense. "No!" she yelled. "What Ed wanted to tell you was that—"
"Stop lying to me!"
Of course she would take Ed's side, Al thought, reeling. No, he shouldn't be shocked; if Ed had created his memories, their childhood friendship hadn't been real, either. Winry might have even been in on this whole thing. The thought imbued Al with fresh fury.
"I know what the truth is," he told them, his voice shaking with anger around that tinny echo. "The person named Alphonse Elric never existed at all."
"That makes no sense!" Winry shouted.
She must have been part of the lie, then. How else could she not see what perfect sense it made? The gaps in Al's memories, the thing Ed hadn't been able to tell him, the constant, beating emptiness that seemed eternal, stretching forward and back—to Al, in his hysteria, it all fell perfectly in place, his fear and anxiety seeming to give him insight where a level-headed Al might have seen it as vaulting him to conclusions. Alone with his thoughts—alone, always alone—panicked, desperate, and afraid, all logic had fled. The emptiness, his slackening grip on reality. There was nothing but this.
"You and Ed have always been together!" Winry insisted. Why was she defending him? Even if she'd been Ed's friend before he'd created Al, didn't she have the empathy to realize what a horrible thing he'd done by making Al to be what he was, and then lying to him for years on end? Where was her compassion? Human or not, wasn't Al worthy of the least bit of kindness? "I knew you when we were kids! My grandma did, too! We're friends, Al! You can trust me!"
"Can I? Really?" His voice was caustic, wanting to cut her the way she'd cut him—the way they both had. And Granny, too—could he trust anyone? It seemed not. "How can I believe anyone when there's no way to prove it? When I'm just a hollow shell? All three of you could be in on it together!"
Now Ed spoke, still sounding numb. "So," he murmured. "You've been sitting on those thoughts all this time. Is there anything else you're hiding … that you wanna say?"
The lying, manipulative little—Al squared his shoulders, glowering down at him.
"What about you, my so-called brother?" he demanded. "Answer my question! Why won't you say anything—unless it's true!"
It was too much; Al could hardly stand to look at them, either of them, and turned sharply to storm off. Ed caught his arm.
"Let go of me." Ed could beg all he wanted, cry and wail and shout about what Al meant to him, but Al wouldn't believe it; he refused to be swayed, to be drawn back in. "What's the point of living this lie?"
"You idiot!" When Al shook him off, Ed only latched on tighter, clinging to Al's arm as Al struggled to break his hold.
"Let go of me—let go—!"
"Al—stop—!"
Al jerked his arm back, and sent it sailing in a backhanded crack to Ed's jaw. As Ed hit the concrete, hard, Al turned and ran.
The days stretch—that's another thing that's hardly changed. It's Winry's idea to get him a wall calendar to mark them off. The routine is peaceful, the constant reality checks anchoring, but measuring his time in quarantine doesn't do much to lift Al's spirits as it gets longer and longer. Still, even as his frustration grows, Al can't bring himself to harass his team of doctors and nurses. Winry and Ed, predictably, are much less forgiving; between Ed's dirty looks and deadpan comments suggesting their incompetence and Winry's constant questions and frequent tongue-lashings, their patience with Al has started to wane, as though he's the one putting them up to it.
"A little longer, Alphonse" is the constant refrain. No one, doctor or nurse, seems able to get more specific than that. It's a complicated process, they tell him, slightly unorthodox, and entirely unique—they've never had a case like his, they say, so chirpily that Al thinks it's meant to be some sort of compliment. He does learn, as the days turn to weeks, that there's actually more to it than shutting him in a room until further notice. The primary goal is to rebuild his immune system so that he can withstand the environment; quarantine alone won't do that, so they've cut him off from the torrent of pathogens that is the outside world to introduce him to them a little bit at a time, until he develops the antibodies he needs to fight off illness without so much help. It's a grueling, ugly process. Using the ventilation in his room, they expose Al to all manner of viruses and bacteria, so that soon it seems he's always down with some sort of cold, his head constantly hurting and his stomach eternally cramping in one way or another. Still weak from malnutrition, his body uses up days' worth of strength fighting off the constant barrages of illness, leaving Al dreadfully bored but without the energy to do anything more than sit or, more often, lie in bed. This doesn't help his emotional state much, either—Ed and Winry keep him mostly grounded, but at night, when the bad dreams and worse memories keep him from sleeping, the numbness he tries so hard to hold at bay inches back in, nasty thoughts like look how much trouble you're causing everyone else mingling with dissociative ones like you aren't real, this isn't real, you're not human. Ed and Winry gladly sacrifice sleep for him on these nights, distracting him with stories and talk until the sun rises on another day he's made it through. Then the cycle begins again.
Contrary to popular belief, even with people you love and would die for, you do run out of things to talk about. When this happens, neither Ed nor Winry takes offense; they both leap to the task of finding other ways to entertain Al through the long, dreary days. Ed loots Central's best libraries for books—storybooks, biographies, manuscripts, books on alchemy, and one very colorful atlas. Winry sends home for an item that, when he sees it, fills Al with the sweetest sort of nostalgia: an old game set she'd gotten as a little girl, consisting of a marked board and dozens of little wooden pieces for playing table games like checkers, chess, tic-tac-toe. The markings are faded, many of the pieces worn and chipped with age or from the many times a young Ed would throw them in frustration upon losing, but when they've been cleaned and can pass through his room, Al nearly cries when he runs his fingers over them.
His darkest thoughts will tell him otherwise, but he's not alone. Lieutenant Hawkeye, busy these days with Mustang's rehabilitation and plans to reform the government, drops by one day to share a cup of tea. The colonel himself visits a few days later; he and Ed entertain Al and Winry by sniping back and forth, their barbs usually taking the form of short jokes versus blind jokes. When it escalates to Mustang accidentally-on-purpose poking Ed with his walking stick, Winry takes charge and orders them to "go flirt somewhere else," prompting hilariously indignant reactions from them both. Armstrong weeps in relief at Al's slowly-but-surely bettering health, and then spends a dragging three hours recounting tales from his family history for Al's amusement, stopping only when Ed, in a true moment of brotherly self-sacrifice, invites him to lunch to hear more for himself.
He even gets letters. On a corkboard on his wall, Al pins Paninya's rough scrawl next to Mei's careful hand. He covers the rest of the surface in photographs. His family, his friends, outdoor scenes of Central, Rush Valley, Resembool. Sometimes it's reassuring, having proof that the world outside the hospital hasn't gone still; sometimes it puts a knot in his throat to think that it's moving on without him.
On the four-week anniversary of his quasi imprisonment, Winry brings him something to remedy that.
"It was Ed's idea," Winry says, as a nurse graciously sets a tiny potted plant on Al's bedside table. "He thought you might want to have something alive in that little cube of yours. We wanted to get you one earlier, but whatever process they use to decontaminate stuff before you can have it kept killing all the plants. This one proved unexpectedly resilient."
Unexpectedly resilient. Al stares at the plant, rubbing its velvety leaves between two fingers. It's a small, green thing inching shyly from its pot; on top of its stem is a single, half-budded blossom of bright yellow. Somewhere in his mind, Al acknowledges that it's probably actually some sort of weed, which would explain its stubbornness—but, having not seen as much as a blade of grass in a month, the sight of it makes Al giddy with happiness. In a sea of clinical white, it looks so green and alive, and it smells like outside. Al even scrapes a leaf with his thumbnail to taste it, which makes Ed wrinkle his nose; it's sour and sharp on his tongue.
What's more, it gives him an idea. Before he can talk himself out of it, Al calls Winry back as she's leaving the room to call her grandmother.
"Could you do me a favor?" he asks, a little hesitantly.
Winry's nodding before he finishes the sentence. "Of course, Al," she says. "Anything."
Al touches the tiny flower, bristly under his fingertips. Unexpectedly resilient, she'd called it.
"Could you call someone for me?" Al asks.
"It's not that he's a bad person," Fletcher mumbled, aiming his words at his knees. He'd already said it at least twice, in different ways, but Al didn't interrupt; it had been hard enough getting him to talk at all, flighty as he was. Even now, his fingers twitched, and his shoulders trembled. He reminded Al of a little bird ready to take off at the slightest hint of a threat, real or not. Touching him probably wouldn't help; under the summer sun, Al's armor would have been hot enough to sting. "I know he doesn't feel good about breaking the law, and deep down, he knows what we're doing here is wrong, but he's—he's just—"
"Stubborn?" Al supplied, when Fletcher trailed off helplessly. Looking resigned, Fletcher nodded. Al knew, logically, that neither of the imposters deserved his sympathy, but it was hard not to feel anything for Fletcher—and harder still to empathize with his brother, who seemed to be causing Fletcher at least as much angst as he was Ed and Al. If Russell's intentions and good will could somehow make up for the lying, they could never make up for how he was treating Fletcher. Still, to criticize him might scare Fletcher off, so Al kept these thoughts to himself. "Why don't you tell him all this?" he asked gently.
"I…" Again, Fletcher trailed off, exhaling softly. The tension in his body and face remained. "I've tried, a few times. He hasn't really listened," he answered, picking at his fingernails. "He's so wrapped up in what he thinks he's got to do for Dad—he won't listen to any arguments. He won't acknowledge it, but he's all twisted up inside under the bravado, and I just…"
"Even if he is just mixed up," Al said quietly, when Fletcher, yet again, didn't finish his thought, "that doesn't excuse what he's doing here, or what he's doing to you. He's your older brother. He's supposed to take care of you, protect you, not force you to do to do stuff you don't want to do, especially not illegal stuff. Fletcher, I know you say he won't listen to you, but he'd probably listen to anyone else even less—it's got to be you who pulls him back before he goes too far. I know you don't want to," he added, when Fletcher paled. He made his voice very kind, placing a ginger hand on Fletcher's shoulder and patting when he didn't flinch as expected. "If it were me and Ed, I don't think I'd want to, either. I know how it is. You think you have to support him unconditionally, be loyal, not question him—but, Fletcher, there are some things in life more important than all that, okay? And this looks like one of them."
Fletcher gave a tiny sigh. He'd gone from picking at his nails to picking at threads at the seams of his overalls. "I think you're right," he murmured.
"And if what you say about him is true," Al continued, "it's not just the town you'll be hurting if you don't stand up to him. I'm not saying he's gonna like it, but he needs a reality check, and bad. The longer you wait, the worse it's gonna be for everyone. If you care about Russell, and you care about this town …"
"I do," Fletcher said softly, as Al trailed off. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
"I know you do." If Al could have smiled, he would have. He hoped his hand on Fletcher's shoulder communicated what his face couldn't. "You've been too scared to do the right thing," Al told him gently, "but you're not a bad person either, Fletcher. You're very gentle and kind. Russell's lucky to have a brother like you."
The compliment was meant to reassure—instead, Fletcher's face went whiter, and he averted his eyes. His hands continued to fidget in his lap; his shoulder twitched, dislodging Al's hand.
"You are, though," Al told him, even as he realized the look in Fletcher's face wasn't quite guilt. "The identity theft wasn't your idea, you barely had a say in the matter—unless there's something else you've done that you think's wrong—you can tell me if there is—"
"There isn't."
"Then—" Al broke off, perplexed. Fletcher shut his eyes. When the moments passed in tense silence, Al said, as carefully as he could, "Did I say something wrong?"
"No." The answer seemed automatic; after a pause, Fletcher shook his head. "I mean, yes. I'm not—but you didn't know, it's okay, just don't—don't worry about it."
"Don't worry about what? What is it?" For a moment, Al stared in confusion, while Fletcher looked more uncomfortable than ever. Then, suddenly, something clicked. "'Brother,' then? That wasn't right?"
Fletcher's head jerked up, face flooding with color. Still, the tiniest bit of tension seemed to have vanished. "No, it wasn't," Fletcher said in a tiny voice. Then, before Al could ask, Fletcher added, "But it's fine, it's okay, just—"
"It's not fine," Al interrupted, gentle but firm. "I'm sorry. What should I have said?" When Fletcher only stared at him, apparently at a loss, Al asked, "'Sister'? Or neither, just 'sibling'?"
"The—the first one." Al nodded to show he understood, and Fletcher sighed again, louder this time. She did seem slightly less anxious. "I'm sorry," she said nonetheless.
"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed," Al said. "Thank you for correcting me."
The faintest of smiles crossed her lips. "You're welcome."
Silence fell again, ruminative instead of tense. Fletcher kept picking at her overalls, while Al stared out at the dusty landscape, the sand a sickly yellow under the gleaming afternoon sun.
"In theory, it shouldn't be all that hard," Fletcher murmured after a few moments. "Pretending to be someone I'm not. It's not like I'm not used to it."
"That'd make it worse," Al answered. He almost felt guilty, nonsensical as it was—besides never asking Fletcher to use his identity, he couldn't help being a boy any more than she could help not being one. What an odd thought that was, too. In this armor, Al didn't feel especially male; his very humanity felt up in the air on some nights, so gender seemed like an inapplicable concept when he was forced to give it any thought at all. Another symptom of bodilessness, he supposed. Once he regained his body, that would probably change. He turned his attention from this thought to another, one that made slow, steady anger rise in him. "Your brother knows, doesn't he? And he's still making you—"
"He offered to concoct some other fake identity for me, some cousin or whatever, but I told him not to bother, it'd be too suspicious and it's just more lying we'd have to do." Fletcher spoke very quickly, her hat flaps quivering as she shook her head. After a moment, she made a frustrated noise and pressed her palms to her temples. "I'm sick of all the lying."
"I know you are. But the only one who can stop it is you," Al told her, as gently as he could. "I'd do it for you if I could, or at least tell you how, but it's got to be you, Fletcher. I know it's a lot of pressure, but I think you can do it, honest. You just have to be brave."
For a moment, she looked like she was about to burst into tears, shaking madly with her hands over her eyes. Yet, when she lowered them, her face seemed oddly blank. Well, not crying was a positive thing, right? As Al watched, Fletcher stood up from the bench and turned away from him. "I should get back to the lab. My brother's going to wonder where I am," she said quietly.
"O-okay." Al stood, too. He couldn't help the feeling of being dismissed. He half-thought to offer to walk her back, but given his quickly-garnered reputation as a bandit, that wouldn't go over well. He chose instead to give an awkward wave before turning in the direction of Belsio's house. He hadn't walked ten steps before Fletcher made a soft noise and hurried back to his side.
"I almost forgot—" Al stared in perplexity as Fletcher rummaged in the deep pockets of her overalls, produced a small paper sack, and held it out to him. "Here. This is for you," she told him.
Al tried to push it away. "I can't take it, you bought it—"
"It's a fair trade—"
A fair trade? For what? His advice? It hadn't seemed like she was listening to him. For borrowing Al's identity? Fletcher didn't give him a chance to ask, because the moment Al took the package with cautious hands, she turned again and took off down the street—but not before flashing him a smile, seeming, for a moment, entirely unfettered, and bright as the summer sun.
"You never did tell me," Al says. "What you meant that day."
"Meant by what?" Fletcher asks.
In the year since he last saw her, her appearance hasn't changed much. She's little taller, maybe, though it's hard to tell when even Ed dwarfs her. She's traded her overalls for actual pants, high-waisted slacks that give her the illusion of height, at least, and her hair might be a little longer, but she's as slight and baby-faced as ever—and, of course, she's still got her hat, that topless green thing with the ear flaps that makes even the stylistically challenged Ed raise an eyebrow. No, it's her demeanor that's so radically different. Where she was meek before, she's self-assured now, her posture less defensive and her blue eyes burning bright. Her talk, her walk, her smile, it's all so much more confident. That confidence is infectious, too; she's like a breath of fresh air.
"When you gave me that medicine, you said it was a 'fair trade.' But you never told me what I gave you," Al explains. "And I could never figure it out. Was it the advice? Ed thought you meant me letting you use my name, but that didn't seem to fit."
"No, it wasn't that," Fletcher says. "It wasn't the advice, either. Well, it kind of was. But it was more … everything else you said." Ducking her head doesn't hide the rise of color in her cheeks. "You really thought I could do the right thing. It was your faith. That's what you gave me, Al. Your faith made me brave."
"But you were already brave," Al tells her, huffing out a laugh. "I didn't give you anything you didn't already have. If anything, I just helped you see it for yourself. So I didn't really give you anything—I just showed you what you already had."
"Then forget the fair trade. Let's call it a favor," Fletcher answers. "All things considered, I think I owed you one. Probably more than one, actually. In the spirit of that…" Her eyes travel from his face, plumper than it was five weeks ago but still rather gaunt, to his body, still thin and sickly-looking under his hospital-issued pajamas. The IV probably doesn't help. Nor the glass window they're talking through. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Fletcher asks softly.
Al shakes his head before her sentence is finished. "I'm honestly doing fine. So much better than I was a few weeks ago, at least. You missed the worst of it, really; I could barely walk when they first shut me in here." Not to mention his fragile mental state—still fragile, truthfully, though Winry assures him constantly that it's to be expected, and a testament to his emotional strength rather than weakness. "I'm just glad you came to see me," Al says.
Fletcher smiles. "Call it curiosity. I've never actually seen what you look like."
"Isn't he handsome?" Neither of them hear Winry open the door; she's smiling as she crosses the room, tucking her long hair behind her ears. "Even when he's thirty pounds underweight, he's pretty easy on the eyes."
Then, as Al makes an indignant noise, his ears burning, Fletcher startles him by replying, "Well, I mean, that, too."
"Winry," Al says, still red in the face, "this is Fletcher Tringham, she's a friend of mine. Fletcher, that's Winry Rockbell, she's … also a friend of mine."
When he's this smooth, it's a wonder he has two.
"Tringham?" Winry repeats. "Not the Tringham Ed's been complaining about for the past week?"
Fletcher snorts. "That'd be my brother. Who couldn't make it, by the way," she adds to Al. "I hope Ed can stomach the disappointment."
Teasing Ed—this is familiar territory. Al nods, trying to will the color to leave his cheeks. "Somehow, I think Ed will survive."
"So, Fletcher," Winry says, stretching out the syllables of her name, like she's tasting it. "How do you know Al? He's never mentioned you before."
"Really." That earns him a look that almost makes Al wish for the old, meek Fletcher. There's something in that smile, almost a smirk, that calls Russell very sharply to mind. Then it's gone, and Fletcher gives a light little laugh. "Isn't that a story," she says as Winry settles down next to her on the floor, the three of them forming an odd, misshapen little triangle.
Al lets Fletcher tell it; he pays enough attention to register with warmth that it's more amusing than painful for her to recount, but that aside, he mostly leans back on his hands and just observes the girls sitting in front of him as they chat. If he's ever wanted proof that, over the course of his and Ed's journey, they've made friends from all walks of life, this would be it. The tall, abrasive automail engineer; the small, soft-spoken alchemist. The girl who's spent her whole life in one place versus the girl who's been dragged all over the country, courtesy of a paranoid, neglectful father. Long-haired Winry in her short skirt and pierced ears, fire in her eyes and sunlight in her smile; Fletcher with short hair and plain clothes, a still water that runs deep. In a year, Fletcher's hair could have grown at least to her shoulders. She must keep it short because she likes it that way. Simple people, Al thinks. The thought makes him smile. In a world so recently purged of power-hungry homunculi and a corrupt government, it's hard to remember the little things—hard to remember that not everything happens for a reason, and not everything needs a reason or a complicated explanation. Winry embraces traditional femininity because she enjoys it; Fletcher shrugs it off for the same reason. Ed wears his hair long and keeps his heart on his sleeve, but he can roughhouse with the best of them, his temper volatile and his bravado unshakable.
Al thinks of his own hair, growing quickly but not quite as long as Fletcher's, cropped short while he slept to reinforce his masculinity within hours of him regaining his body. Was it that one nurse, or are adults in general just set in their ways? What's the point of surviving an impending apocalypse if people don't change for the better—adapt? The world is complex, but for how it makes them suffer, its people deserve to be simple. Al deserves to be simple, after spending years struggling to retain his humanity, ruminating on the horrors he's witnessed during the lonely, endless nights; he deserves to like simple things for simple reasons, society be damned. He deserves to wear his hair long if he wants, even if he is a boy.
And if that label snags in his ears as much as ever, that same wrong-note feeling that he thought would vanish with the armor—simple people, Al tells himself. It sounds wrong because it doesn't fit. And that's all right, too.
He nearly falls out of bed when he hears it.
"Provided you don't take a turn for the worst," the nurse says—the one with the long silver hair, the one who cut his weeks ago, "we're going to discharge you at the end of the week, Alphonse."
"Are you serious?" Al asks. He hopes so. He'll probably cry if she says no; he'll probably cry regardless, in all honesty, with how sick he is of this glorified fish tank they've got him in. "You mean it? Really?"
"She damn well better," Ed says caustically, at the same time Winry says, "It's about time!" Sitting between them, Fletcher's comparatively quiet, but she looks ecstatic all the same. Al glances from her back to the nurse, who wears a very wan-looking smile. Al thinks she won't be sorry to see the back of him, if only because it means she'll be rid of his loudmouthed entourage.
"We mean it. Really," she tells him. With that, she exits his containment cube and leaves the room, giving Ed and Winry permission to start whooping loudly.
"Oh, Al, that's great!" Fletcher says excitedly, over Winry's indignant shrieks as Ed picks her up and spins her in a happy circle. "You get to go home soon! And you can actually—you know—feel it and stuff."
She must think it sounds stupid, from the way she flushes, but Al's beaming broadly. Just the thought makes him want to sing. "That's right," he says. "I can't wait."
"Ow, Ed, your sleeve's caught on my earring!" Winry gripes. Ed gasps so loudly that Fletcher startles; he drops Winry so unceremoniously that she barely keeps her feet when she touches the ground, and Fletcher braces her with a hand.
"Earrings!" Ed says. "I fuckin' forgot—do I still have—?" Ignoring Al's, Winry's, and Fletcher's confused stares, he starts searching his pockets until his eyes widen with triumph; then, grinning, he produces a small handful of shining silver. "These," he says, holding the earrings out to a blinking Winry, "are yours."
"I didn't know you still had those," Winry murmurs. Her fingers seem to shake as she takes them, replacing them in her ears with a practiced hand.
Ed's smile probably looks more sentimental than he wants it to. "Course I still did, stupid," he tells her. Winry kicks him, and then immediately engulfs him in a huge hug, so that it's Ed's turn to shriek indignantly.
Watching them makes Al smile. Some things will never change.
"I didn't have my body when Winry first pierced her ears," Al muses a little while later. Fletcher's gone with Winry to the cafeteria for dinner, and Ed's lounging on the loveseat with some thick book, which he lowers at the sound of Al's voice. "Is that right, Brother?"
"Yeah," Ed tells him, smiling. "That's right."
"Didn't you get her earrings for her, as a present?"
"Sure did," Ed answers with some pride. As Al mulls this over, Ed says, not unkindly, "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Al says. "Just wanted to make sure I was remembering right. They're really nice-looking. If—"
He shuts his mouth with a click; his thoughts are getting away from him. Ed's too sharp to miss the last syllable and he looks up at Al in curiosity. "If what?" he asks.
It's been a few days since Al decided, quietly, that "boy" isn't a label he likes. In his downtime, when he isn't listening to Winry passing on Granny's well wishes or Fletcher's stories about Xenotime, he's ruminated more on similar labels that he doesn't think apply to him. "Boy" and "man" and "male," but "girl" and "woman" and "female," too—though he does like "brother," and masculine pronouns don't bother him especially. He's used gender-neutral pronouns for himself in his head a few times; the ring, while a little unfamiliar, is very nice in his ears. He imagines Winry talking to Granny: "Did I tell you about Al? They're going to be released from the hospital after this week!" Or Fletcher, describing her visit to Russell: "I stayed with Al at the hospital; don't worry, they're doing really good now." It tingles pleasantly, so that Al feels warm inside. Warm and right.
Yet, he's kept these thoughts to himself. He knows that it's stupid. Ed, who sacrificed an arm for him, who's tried to die for him more than once; Winry, whose support didn't waver even after Al and Ed played God; Fletcher, who'd surely empathize with him, whose understanding knows no limits—these aren't people who'll laugh when he tells them he isn't a boy. These are people who'll love him no matter what. That's just it, though; he doesn't want his gender—or lack thereof, it's starting to seem—to be a despite the fact condition of their affections. He wants them to embrace that he isn't quite a boy and isn't quite a girl, but contentedly floating somewhere—not between, but outside of it all. Unsure if that'll happen, unable to think of how to broach the topic, he's held his tongue.
As it is—this is as good an opening as any. Ed watches him, bright with curiosity but gentle with concern, and Al knows he can trust him, above all else.
"I was just saying, you know, they're nice," Al tells him. "If I had earrings, I'd want earrings like that."
For one awful moment, Al waits for the dismissal. He waits to hear boys don't wear earrings, Al, the voice he loves so well thin with disdain, his features harsh and critical. Instead, Ed grins.
"And you guys tell me I have no sense of style," he says.
Just like that.
When Al gets out of here, he's going to hug Ed so hard his eyes pop out.
The day dawns bright and chilly for summer, but Al isn't complaining: the brisk breeze feels impossibly sweet as it stings his face, like a thousand tiny kisses. Ed supports him with an arm around his waist as they enter the train station. Al figures he should use his cane for this purpose, since he's meant to walk with it until his next appointment six weeks from now, but Ed smells too nice, feels too warm, for Al to let go. Winry lingers near them; when Al has to stop to catch his breath, she's happy to stop as well, smiling gently and trailing cool fingertips from Al's hairline and down his cheek.
Shading her face with her hand, Fletcher's train catches her eye.
"I guess I better go," she says, turning to face them with her suitcase held in both hands. A slightly rueful smile twitches on her lips. "Thanks for letting me come see you guys."
"Of course." This is Winry, who, despite knowing her for a week and a half, immediately steps forward to give Fletcher a hug. "It was nice to meet you," she tells her.
"Take care, kid," Ed says. He holds out a hand, but instead of a handshake, when Fletcher copies the gesture he slaps her palm companionably. "Keep your brother out of trouble."
"Always," she laughs. Al notices her shaking her hand where Ed's slap must've stung.
Finally, Fletcher faces him. Is it the glare of sunlight, or are those tears in her eyes? At least she's still smiling, her expression soft and her cheeks pink.
"It was good to see you, Alphonse," she tells him.
"Thanks for coming," he answers.
It's lame. He should say something else. Should he go for a hug, or play it safe with a handshake? Fletcher decides on the latter as Al decides on the former; she squeaks in surprise as he steps forward suddenly and throws his arms around her, holding her against his chest. A tiny arm slides around his waist after a moment of hesitation, squeezing tight with affection. It's nothing like the hug they shared when he first stepped out of quarantine—that was a tentative, polite thing, Al not wanting to weird her out, Fletcher not wanting to hurt him. This is different, better. For being so small, she's surprisingly supple in his arms; her hair smells clean as Al bows his face into it. He doesn't want to let go.
"Uh, Al, the girl's got a train to catch," Ed tells him after several seconds, huffing out a laugh. Oh, God, will Al hear it later.
"Sorry," Al says. He pulls back with a laugh of his own, an awkward thing that matches the color in his cheeks—and in hers. Yet, Fletcher doesn't release him immediately; instead, she startles him by leaning up on her tiptoes, and brushing her lips against his cheek for the tiniest fraction of a second. Before Al can decide how to react, she pulls away, her face as bright as Ed's coat.
"Okay, goodbye," she says to the ground, and turns and starts sprinting toward her train.
Winry's grinning at Al and Ed's laugh is predatory—he's going to rip Al apart for this. Unless. Before Fletcher gets lost in the crowd, Al cups his hands around his mouth and shouts after her, "Tell Russell Ed sends his love!"
That gets Winry cackling, while Ed's voice cracks in wordless horror. Al sees Fletcher turn back and beam in the distance, waving madly, before she disappears among the throng of travelers.
"Just for that," Ed says irritably, storming over to the closest bench, "I'm not fuckin' giving you your present."
"Present?" Al repeats, eyebrows shooting up. He sits down beside him on the bench; Ed folds his arms and looks away, pouting exaggeratedly. Winry takes the seat on Al's other side.
"Call it a get-well present," she tells him. "Except, you're mostly already well, so it's more of a got-well present. Whatever. And Ed's going to give it to you, because he's not a fucking baby," she adds, leaning over Al to address him. Ed just snorts.
"Sure, let's all gang up on Ed. We'll make a goddamn spectacle out of it," he grumbles. Still, he reaches into his coat, produces a small box, and shoves it unceremoniously toward Al. "Here you go, you ungrateful shit," he says, affection shining through the insult clear as day.
Al takes the box from his hands. It's small enough to fit in his palm and velvety to the touch, like a jewelry box. Would Ed have—? He probably opens it more quickly than is strictly polite, but it's shock that makes him hasty, not greed. His suspicion confirmed, Al stares inside the box for several seconds, struggling to process what he's seeing.
"I mean, no pressure if you don't like 'em," Ed says after a moment, self-consciousness creeping into his voice. "Don't feel compelled. You just sounded like you might want—"
"You got me earrings," Al interrupts.
Ed blinks. "Uh, yeah," he says.
Al looks at him. "You'd pierce my ears?" he asks.
"You'd let Ed near your head with a needle?" Winry says disbelievingly. "Al? Did all that time in quarantine kill your brain cells?"
Ed reaches over Al to lightly smack her arm; Winry just laughs, unapologetic.
"No, fuckin' Miss Loudmouth over here's gonna do it," he answers, looking at Al like he's the most put-upon man in the world. "If you trust her near your head with a needle. Don't see why not—she might hate me but she's sweet on you—" It's Winry's turn to slap him, her cheeks flushing bright, while Ed grins.
Al's hardly paying attention; still shocked, he takes an earring gingerly between his thumb and forefinger and brings it close to his face to examine it. It's very small, a quarter the size of his pinky fingernail, its surface made of dozens of itty bitty little rhinestones that glitter in the light. Done bickering, Ed and Winry watch him very closely.
"If you don't like 'em—" Ed begins again.
"I don't like them," Al says.
Their faces fall. "That's okay, Al," Winry tells him. "We can always—"
"I love them," he amends.
Ed shoves an elbow in his ribs. "Well, shit, don't scare us like that!"
"I knew you would," Winry says, beaming. "I helped pick them out, you know; your dear brother forgot to mention that—"
"Yeah, and if he'd hated 'em you'd have let me take all the credit, huh—"
"Yep, that sounds about right—"
Al interrupts their argument by throwing an arm around each of their necks, tugging them in close for a messy three-person hug. "I love you guys," he murmurs.
Winry tucks her head into Al's shoulder, and Ed wraps an arm around his waist to rub his back. Al could lose himself in the warmth of them; he lets it cradle him, softening his thoughts and curling in his heart, and everything feels right.
Bracing himself, Al presses the tissue, damp with rubbing alcohol, to his earlobe. The sting isn't as bad as he expects; he pinches for a moment or two before he drops the tissue in the trash, and then replaces his earring with careful hands. Drawing a breath, he glances at his reflection. He's regained weight rapidly since coming home—his cheeks have lost their gauntness, his eyes their dullness, and his skin seems richer and darker, much closer to Ed's healthy golden brown than to the gray tinge it had in the hospital. His hair almost reaches his chin; fluffy and blond, it frames his face and smooths the harsh line of his jaw. The earrings soften him even further. Al smiles, pushes his sweater sleeves up to his elbows, and has just turned to go out to the hall when he hears Ed's voice bellow from downstairs. "Yo! Alphonse!"
Al hurries to the staircase, but he just barely resists the urge to run down the stairs. Daily exercises, as prescribed by the doctors in Central, have made his legs strong enough that he can walk without the cane now, but they're not quite strong enough to run downhill, which he learned the hard way. Actually, it's not Al who minds bruises all that much; for him, they're little patches of extra sensitivity, absolutely appreciated for someone who's been deprived of it for so long. It's Ed and Winry who pale to see Al black and blue. He tries to be careful for their sakes.
In the kitchen, Granny's reading a newspaper, and Ed's smirking. "Your girlfriend's here," she tells him, glancing up with a smile of her own.
"Which one?" Ed says.
Granny snorts indelicately as she flips a page. "The little one," she answers, and returns to her reading after she adds, "She's in the front yard. She's fallen in love with the dog."
That's equivalent exchange for you. Al's friends—not his girlfriends, he thinks, squinting—are dog people. If he's honest, his pride still hasn't recovered from hearing cats are mean in Fletcher's sweet voice; Winry's agreement only cemented the betrayal. Luckily, despite sharing this enormous flaw, they're not without their redeeming qualities. And he hasn't seen Fletcher in a month. Feeling himself grin, Al goes outside to meet her.
Winry sits on the doorstep, clutching a cup of hot tea with a broad smile on her face. Fletcher's suitcase rests at her feet; Fletcher herself sits in the grass, laughing loudly as Den nudges between her knees to lick her nose. "I think we've been replaced," Winry tells Al. The steam from her tea curls around her face. Somehow, it makes her eyes seem brighter.
"Oh, no," Al says. Still nuzzling Den, Fletcher looks up at the sound of his voice. Her smile gets, if possible, even wider, and she hurries over with Den at her heels.
"How are you feeling?" Fletcher asks after a tight embrace. Standing on her toes to reach, she frames his face in her hands. "You look so good! Look at you!"
"I told you all we needed to do was bring them home," Winry responds.
Shortly after returning to Resembool, Al did his best to explain his gender feelings to Ed and the Rockbells. After weeks of thinking on it, he still didn't have a label for his specific identity; it was Ed who told him not to worry about it, insisting that Al didn't need a special term if he didn't want one, or if it only stressed him out. Winry asked about pronouns, a much easier question to answer—he'd realized pretty quickly that he likes both he and they pronouns, and he encouraged them to alternate, if possible. They've taken it in stride. He's honestly too lucky to have them.
"I feel great," Al tells Fletcher. "More than great. I feel … refreshed. New."
"That's—that's really great." Fletcher pushes a stray lock of hair from Al's face. "I really like your hair, too. Are you growing it out?"
"Pretty much," Al replies. "I mean, worst come to worst, if I don't like it long I can always cut it again. But I kind of want to see what I'll look like."
"Nothing wrong with trying something new," Fletcher says. She kicks aside her suitcase and sits on the bottom stair at Winry's feet, leaning against her leg. "The important part is that you're happy."
Is he happy? Life in Resembool is quiet and peaceful. He knows he'll want to see more of the world someday, but he'll always need an anchor, and it might as well be this place; the clean country air and clear skies will never not feel like home. There's a corkboard in his room like his one from the hospital tacked with letters and photos from Rush Valley to Xing, reminders for when that old lonely ache bites at his heels. Even now, it bites. The nightmares keep him from sleeping some nights, or else the emptiness creeps back in and leaves him numb, dull, hopeless, unwilling to even get out of bed and face a reality he barely believes in. At these times, he tries to think of the little things. It starts with sensory things, naturally. The cool steel of Ed's left leg, in sharp contrast to his warm, soft skin. Winry's hands, equal parts smooth from baby oil and rough from calluses. The surprising strength with which Granny hugs. Den's bristly fur. From there, it evolves into more. Fletcher's bright, unfettered smile. Mei's delicacy, hand in hand with her ferocity. The dignity with which Mustang holds himself, the stars of a Brigadier General gleaming on his shoulders, his guide dog at his side. Hawkeye's unwavering loyalty. Armstrong's surprising grace.
Ed joins them on the staircase. "I'm supervising," he says loftily, when Winry shoots him a look. "In case you crazy kids get any funny ideas."
It makes Winry glower and Fletcher blush, and Al chuckles and sits beside them, hugging his knees to his chest. The nightmares will never go away entirely, and the battle against the numbness is ongoing, more of a struggle on some days than others. But he's not alone, and he never will be again.
So, yes. He's happy.